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It looks over a deep and lovely lake that is long enough to touch the horizon. Ithaca has cataracts. It has drama. by cute"; it is not a concept joint. Nor has it been mailed to death. There is a self-confidence here, a lack of self-consciousness: it is a professor who won't abandon his worn-at-the-elbows jacket; a businessman who spends weekends in his fox-heeled, the-wife-hates-them tennis shoes. I am comfortable in this garb, it is saying. I don't care what people think. This maturity stems, in part, from Ithaca's setting, perched as it is on a lumpy porridge of ancient, beveled hills. It looks over a deep and lanky lake that is long enough to touch the horizon. Ithaca has cataracts. It has drama. Compared to its many municipal neighbors, it is capacious, brawny and wide-shouldered (as are the campuses of Cornell and Ithaca College, in miniature). Only the luckiest towns provide vantages from which one can gaze upon them, and Ithaca is lucky. Its combination of snugness and vista lends itself at once to a healthy self-awareness on the part of its residents: there is, indeed, more to the world than Home but there's no place . . . The interface of gown and town, however, is hardly seamless, especially when that university is one of the world's great ones and the town is small and relatively isolated and takes pride in its cultural egalitarianism. I think that Cornell's location, and its proximity to Cayuga Heights (easily the most economically advantaged village of greater Ithaca) is unfortunate—not so much physically as symbolically. The campus looms like a prince's castle, and some of those (especially the youngest) who live within its walls have a shameful inclination to be rigidly class conscious and haughty—"You found that at the mall? My God, how tacky." There exists, as well, within non-Cornell Ithaca, a reverse snobbery, a resentment of students, who many worka-day citizens see, both understandably and misguidedly, as children of privilege and excessive leisure. And see the faculty as overpaid and distant. There is a further sort of resentment in town because, in many instances, non-Cornellians realize that their continued livelihood is in no small part based on the very existence of that perceived privileged and leisured class. If there is a magic-kingdom key in Ithaca— where you need a DNA match to cash a check—it is a Cornell I.D. card. (This pass-to-the-head-of-the-line business was brought home to me almost immediately upon my arrival here. I had tried to get a phone hooked up, and was told that the wait for service would be a long one. I tried again, and explained that my wife was associated as faculty with Cornell. The phone was ringing its head off two days later.) This is not fair. This is not right. It is downright un- American. But, without sounding flippant, this is the way most of the world works most of the time. Always has. Probably always will. If this double standard is a forced and harsh-tasting dose of reality, it is, unfortunately, medicine. In the end, though, it is non-Cornell that often holds the strong cards. I've spoken with a lot of students, Nosey Parker that I am (by nature and vocation), and find many of them wistful, wishing they could be more a part of what they see as a natural, normal, exemplary, idyllic real-world: Ithaca-beyond-the-gates. They apologize for being from New Jersey or Long Island or Manhattan or Ohio or some other whipping-boy location. One student told me where he was from, then stopped and said, "You know, here is better. I wish it were my home." What I like to think he meant by "here" was a place with both feet on the ground, a place of energy and charity, a place of personality, a place without pretense. A place that is all of the above and, to boot, a place where no one thinks you're putting on airs when you use the subjunctive tense correctly. Students sometimes shoot themselves in the foot by clustering too much. I see them as more or less normal humans: overworked, nervous about the future, insecure. They put their pants on one leg at a time, even if those pants are a sight to behold. But most of them move on, back to the city, back to their home country. Some of them even back to Ohio. But not all of them. Some settle in Ithaca, and strengthen the bonds, keep the estuaries of the Blessed Isle of the Genteel Archipelago fresh. The molecules mix. Ithaca becomes international: look at the surnames in the phone book; put on the feedbag for Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Italian, Greek—in many American towns, "ethnic food" means the frozen pizza aisle at the supermarket. y the time you read this, I'll have returned to my hometown, Missoula, Montana. Like Ithaca, it is a working town with a university and a couple of major industries and serves as a regional trade and cultural center. As in Ithaca, all sorts of people rub shoulders and rub off on each other. I like to think of Missoula and Ithaca as a pair of terrific, much-in-demand finish carpenters. Who do the best job in town. At ethical cost. Who read Rousseau or Milton on their lunch break. Who root for the Bills on Sunday. Who are craftsmen, not tradesmen. Who are happy with their place in the world, and understand exactly what that place is. I don't know what in the world goes on in the Synchrotron Facility. Nor do I have any real idea how they make those pesto/mozzarella/tomato omelets at Andy's so damn satisfying. Both secrets will remain secrets. But I don't mind: it is somehow enough to know they are there, right in my backyard. a
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Page 3 and 4: JUNE 1994 Departments CORNELL 22 Fo
Page 5 and 6: NAHA RHODES KUCHNG ATHENS DURBAN LO
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Page 9 and 10: SANTORIN1 NOSY BE HONNINGSVAAG ADEN
Page 11 and 12: June 1994 V A C A T I O N The Grand
Page 13 and 14: FAST AFOOT Editor: When the Alumni
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Page 23 and 24: threaten their importance in the sc
Page 25 and 26: FIGHT! Scientists say bioengineered
Page 27 and 28: f believe that all the media attent
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Page 31 and 32: MYSTERIES 1 ITHACA One man's view o
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